Monday, September 10, 2012

Ahh, what it is to be a pioneer. A few years ago, Philippe and I bust all our gut strings on the Hungarian Dances project: a novel (mine) about 80 years of cross-currents between Gypsy and classical violin playing, with a CD (his) created specifically, though separately, to match. It was, to the best of our knowledge, the first time that a classical CD had been recorded to partner a contemporary novel (most others were just compilations of pre-existing tracks).

Fortunately, in a few short years, we've had the advent of mass downloads: it's a lot simpler to do this kind of thing now. And it seems we were indeed pioneers. Now they're hitting the shelves thick and fast. I was a tad intrigued when Jodi Picoult (who had the same editor at the same publishing house as I did, btw) put out a CD of country music to accompany her novel Sing You Home. Then there was the business of 50 Shades of Grey and Sperm - oops - Spem in Alium...

But Cecilia Bartoli is going a step further: she has long been the Cleopatra of the concept album and her new disc, Mission, has a new historical mystery novel to be its companion piece, written specially for the purpose, by Donna Leon. Classy. Get a load of this:

Thursday, August 30, 2012

I'm just back from the Salzburg Festival, where I heard more amazing singers within 72 hours than you'd believe possible. Three very different operas from three different centuries, each focused on war, actual or between the sexes - usually both. My review-proper will be in Opera Now magazine. In the meantime, here's a little taste of the trip.

Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Die Soldaten proved perhaps opera's most devastating experience: an all-out tour-de-force, assaulting senses and emotions alike. Good to see TV cameras there last Sunday, as this production is a great achievement that requires preservation on film; nothing, though, can really capture the impact of experiencing it live, from a seat almost beneath the largest of several outsize tam-tams. This opera musters every last shred of force available to an orchestra, a cast, a lead soprano (the magnificent Laura Aikin), a conductor (heroic Ingo Metzmacher) and the human ear itself to get across its message: the horrors that these military men foist upon the hapless Marie, and the failure of a variety of parents to prevent it. The composer took his own life in 1970. Books on Zimmermann are in short supply, and there seems to be nothing in English, but Alex Ross provides some valuable insights here.

Other question-marks hang over Carmen. Updated to Franco's Spain, it starred
Magdalena Kozena as a red-haired firebrand partnered first of all by her husband,
Sir Simon Rattle, in the pit, and secondly by Jonas Kaufmann, whose Don Jose was a puzzling matter possibly determined by directorial decisions rather than tenorial ones.

Finally, Handel's Giulio Cesare, with Andreas Scholl as Julius, Cecilia Bartoli as Cleopatra, Anne Sofie von Otter Cornelia and Philippe Jaroussky Sesto. These people know how to Handel you. A perturbing moment towards the end when one reckoned that the Salzburg Festival and all those great singers should know better than to put drinks on a piano. But otherwise...these guys and GFH together moved me to tears several times - Cornelia's first aria, the duet for her and Sesto, Cleo's 'Piangerai' - and left me at the end of five hours almost ready to beg for more. Gulp.

Inside the venues: phenomenal music-making, imaginative productions (some more than others) and world-class performances. The setting: mountain scenery, evening dresses, outsize jewellery, facelifts, sponsors' parties, pre-show drinkies choice of Moet on one side of the road or Taittinger on the other.

And the Festspielhave? In case you haven't seen all this before, the Festspielhaus bears Roman-style lettering above the door, declaring it the 'Festspielhavs'. This is where the Festspielhaves go in. The promenade of the audience around the champagne stalls often attracts onlookers. Those are the Festspielhavenots.

Pretentious though it may look, it's not all snob value. On my second and third evenings my neighbours were enthusiasts who were there on their own purely for love of music and interest in theatre. One was a retired lady from west of Paris, the other a mechanic from the Salzkammergut. And there is kindness aboard, too. Exiting Die Soldaten, I was brolliless in a downpour that put Salzburg's famous Schnurlregen to shame. A Californian lady festival-goer spotted me and offered to share her umbrella across the bridge. That's never happened en route to Waterloo Station. (Below: the view of the Castle from the interval crowd outside the Felsenreitschule. The dog is a Festspielhavenot.)

The atmosphere has changed a little since my last visit, some 20 years ago. Back then, almost every shop window bore a poster showing one or more of the musical stars visiting the town. The buses carried advertisements proudly welcoming Maurizio Pollini and Krystian Zimerman to Salzburg. The record shops were full to busting. Today? The sides of the buses plug designer outlets and free parking. I only spotted one record shop in town, and it specialised in world music. Zimerman's recital had been cancelled due to illness (Leif Ove Andsnes replaced him). Sponsor logos are plastered everywhere - gone are the graceful days of
discretion in philanthropy (though it's nice of Nestle to provide Kit-Kats for the journalists in the media centre). And a gaping division is all too evident between the down-at-heel
atmosphere on the outskirts of town and around the station, and the
dripping-with-gold-and-designer-shops historic centre. The one thing
that hasn't changed is the number of tourists and the amount of Mozartkugeln on sale.

A more welcome addition is a big screen in the Domplatz that relayed Die Soldaten live on Sunday, and on other evenings showed film of operas from festivals gone by. And I may have missed a trick by not taking the Sound of Music tour bus - apparently you all sing 'Doe, a Deer' and there's a quiz to win a packet of Edelweiss seeds. But the way time panned out, it was a choice of that or a jog along the river, and the latter won. Had to burn off some of that chocolate.

Check the November issue of Opera Now for my detailed review of the three performances.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Cecilia Bartoli has just brought out a fabulous new CD of music written for and by the legendary 19th-century diva Maria Malibran, Pauline Viardot's big sister and an inspiration to Bellini, Rossini and Mendelssohn, amongst others.

I went to Paris a few weeks back to meet her in her Malibran Bus - a converted lorry in which her ample collection of Malibran memorabilia is on display. It was parked on the Place de la Sorbonne, causing double-takes all round, and it's coming to London with her in December, when she has two concerts at the Barbican (both already sold out!). Here's my article from The Independent a few days ago. I think it ran on Wednesday. I regret to say that I was so busy with the 'Heliane' talk preparations that I hadn't even realised it had come out.

The disc is wonderfully accompanied by a Swiss period-instrument ensemble, La Scintilla, which brings a whole new colour to the bel canto world - it's like watching by candlelight. There's plenty of Bellini and Pacini, but also marvellous virtuoso numbers by Malibran and her father; and for me, the highlight of the disc is a substantial Mendelssohn concert aria 'Infelice', written for Malibran and her second husband, the violinist Charles de Beriot. Bartoli has drafted in Maxim Vengerov to play the solo. It's a masterpiece.

I first read about 'Infelice' a couple of years ago when I was researching Viardot for the St Nazaire 2006 project, and tried to track it down for the show. In the end we dropped the idea since it was rather tangential and much too long for the Viardot/Turgenev story - we already had way too much stuff. But I was sad not to see or hear it. What a treat to discover it on this disc, in the best possible hands.

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Music, dance and writing in London, UK. Jessica writes for The Independent and numerous other publications. Author of biographies, novels, plays, libretti. Editor of The Amati Magazine. "Everything she writes is worth reading" - The Times..."Dazzling perceptiveness" - Joanna Lumley on Songs of Triumphant Love...
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JESSICA DUCHEN TALKS, CONCERTS & PLAYS

29 March 2015, 7pm
The Amati Exhibition at The Langham, London
The great Hungarian virtuoso Roby Lakatos and his Gypsy fusion ensemble are giving a special cabaret-style performance as part of the Amati Exhibition at the Langham. As editor of The Amati Magazine, I’m introducing them. Tickets are £24 and can be booked here

21 May 2015, 3.30pm
Classical:NEXT, De Doelen, Rotterdam
At the vibrant annual classical music trade fair Classical:NEXT I’m chairing a networking meeting entitled ‘Music to Our Ears – Creative Networking towards Gender Equality in the Music World’. Our distinguished panel of speakers includes Gillian Moore, head of music at the Southbank Centre, Vanessa Reed, executive director of the PRS for Music Foundation, and Susanna Eastburn, chief executive of Sound and Music. More information here

5 June 2015, 8pm
Riverhouse Barn, Walton-on-Thames
A rehearsed reading of my play A Walk through the End of Time with actors Caroline Dooley and David Webb. The Cremona Trio will feature in a performance of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time the next day. We'll be there for Q&A afterwards. Book here.

12 June 2015, 6.15pm
Ulverston International Music Festival
Pre-concert talk with violinist Tasmin Little and pianist Martin Roscoe before their recital on the opening night of one of the Lake District’s most beautiful festivals. More here

22-26 June 2015
Istanbul Music Festival
A series of four pre-concert talks for the Istanbul International Festival, to be held in the garden of the Hagia Eirene Museum in the historic centre of this great and vibrant city…
22 June
The Young Chopin. This evening Daniil Trifonov performs the composer's Piano Concerto No.1.
23 June
The Fantastical World of the French Baroque. Preceding a concert featuring Magdalena Kožena (mezzo) and Emmanuelle Haïm (conductor)
24 June
Brahms, Schumann, Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim: The Indivisibles. Christian Tetzlaff performs the Brahms Violin Concerto.
26 June
Mozart and the Violin. Arabella Steinbacher and Maxim Rysanov feature with the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra in two of Mozart’s violin concertos and the Sinfonia Concertante.
Festival website here

28 July, afternoon performance (time tbc)
Fishguard Festival, Wales
I’m teaming up with the distinguished British pianist Peter Donohoe, artistic director of the Fishguard Festival, for a special performance of Alicia’s Gift, the concert of the novel. More info here